Scalpel?  Check.  10 blade?  Check.  Surgical mask?  Got it.  Rubber ducky?  Yep.  Ball bearings?  Sure.  A leather glove?  All there.  OK, kids, prepare for the operation, because we're going into... another Gaming Update! 
 
Only really focusing on one thought today, though I'll briefly talk about what I've been playing. 
 
A Hero's Quest 
 
I'd like to think I'm not one of the old men around Giant Bomb, but the truth is that I'm 27 and I've been gaming for close to 22 years.  That means I've been playing games longer than most people on this site have been alive.  Pretty sad, but this is my number one hobby besides reading and writing, and I enjoy the hell out of the site.  I say all this as a pretext because I'm going to talk about a series of games that practically no one remembers and another that practically everyone here has heard of. 
 
When I started gaming, it was on a Tandy 1000 with only a few games.  Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry 2, Hero's Quest (later to be retitled Quest for Glory), and Police Quest.  As you can tell, I grew up on Sierra adventure games.  All the games were enjoyable to a certain degree, but I was especially enamored of two of them - Leisure Suit Larry and Quest for Glory.  Now, my thoughts on LSL, Al Lowe, and the recent two travesties in the series could fill many, many blogs, but I'm talking today about Quest for Glory.  Quest for Glory was enchanting for a young boy who would grow up to become slightly obsessed with fantasy novels.  It had action, adventure, and while the plot was pretty basic by today's standards, at the time, it was all sorts of awesome.  I could read very well at an early age, so I had that as an advantage, and I'd need it too, because I wanted to read about every little detail in the world of Spielberg.   I would go on to play through every game in the series multiple times, with the highlights defintely being the first and fourth in the series.  I loved those worlds with a passion, and Quest for Glory 4 was really the first "talkie" computer game I ever played.
 
When it comes to the adventure games of the day, I do something akin to looking through rose-colored glasses, but I still genuinely love the genre and revisit many of the classics on a yearly basis.  Quest for Glory is sadly not one of those, not for a lack of desire, but because the series has become insanely expensive to find and my discs have long since been lost.  It makes me happy to see Steam offering the Space Quest and King's Quest collections, and I continue to hope they offer this fantastic series.  But I'd be lying if I said that the gameplay in Quest for Glory hasn't been made obsolete. 
 
One series of games in particular feels like a wonderful throwback to Quest for Glory, and that's Fable.  The second game in particular felt more like an homage to Quest for Glory than anything I've played.  The basics are all there - lovable townsfolk, skills that increase by using them, a fantasy world, beautiful music (ok, Quest for Glory's was beautiful back in the day - shaddup), swords and sorcery, the works.  Lionheart's world and Sierra's felt like kinsmen, and I love the Fable series for that.  That's why I'm so excited to see Fable 3 being announced.  My hope, though, is that Fable 3 continues the enjoyable gameplay and beautiful world without becoming overly gimmicked, if it's reliant upon Natal (not sure if it is or isn't).  The other thing I'd like to see is more unique townspeople and characters to allow for more creative interactions.  Basically, I want to see NPC's that don't feel like friendly mobs. 
 
What I'm Playing 
 
Been revisiting a bit of Puzzle Quest, trying to mop up the last few achievements on there.  Also, still playing Ultimate Alliance, a bit of Worms 2, and am trying to beat a certain boss in Star Ocean: The Last Hope so that I can finally finish that game. 
 
Question of the Week 
 
    How long have you been gaming, and what game holds the most sentimental value to you (regardless of quality nowadays) and why?